I'm new to the Steam platform. I installed it last week so I could play the beta of Banner Saga Factions. Decided to poke around the store.

Ended up enjoying the demo of Defender's Quest enough to buy the game. The full version required me to update a library (Adobe AIR), which I did. So far so good.

About two days later Steam required me to download an updated version of DQ before I could run the game again. And the updated version refused to launch. Checked the forums, developer had a comment saying "Sorry guys, I broke the Mac version. I hope to fix it soon."

Also, the next time I tried to play Banner Saga Factions I discovered that it won't work with the version of the AIR framework that is required to play DQ.

I'm not sure if this is just unlucky or if Steam games are constantly assassinating themselves and one another. Does Steam always suck to this degree?

Updated to add:

What I've learned: Steam is just a store. They offer convenient access to a good selection of titles but don't set their own compatibility or performance standards for Mac games.

My happy ending: The developer of Defenders Quest has been responsive to feedback in the forums on Steam. I've been sending additional bug reports via email and they've hooked me up with a version of the game that runs without Steam's involvement.

In the future: I'm going to keep buying games directly from the developers wherever possible.

Opt-in to the Steam Beta under preferences, which contains many Mac-specific fixes and improvements that has not hit the main client yet. This includes memory leaks, reduced CPU/battery load, and other bug fixes.

Here you can see the change log of some of the things they've patched.

Defender's Quest developer requires a version of Adobe AIR that conflicts with the version required by the beta of another game, Banner Saga Factions, from an entirely different developer

Therefore, Steam -- which is just a storefront and digital distribution channel and neither owns, develops, or supports the games in question -- blows.

So you have two games (one of which is still in beta, neither of which is controlled in any way by Valve, the company that makes Steam) that come from two different developers with two conflicting sets of system requirements.

Explain again how this is Steam's fault? How would your experience have been any different if you had purchased & downloaded them directly instead of through Steam?

Well, in the case of Defenders Quest my experience would be quite different outside of Steam because the developer would be able to roll the Mac version back to a different release, something he has said he can't do on Steam.

Your third bullet point gets to the essence of my point. I'm new to the Steam platform and wasn't really sure what to expect. Perhaps it was silly for me to think that Steam calling itself "the ultimate gaming platform" meant Steam itself did something to make the games work or to prevent developers from putting out games with contradictory system requirements.

It seems to me, an admittedly unsophisticated newcomer, that if Steam were really "just a store" it wouldn't require me to keep its own application running in order to launch the goods I bought from the store. It also wouldn't force me to download updates. Both of these factors lead me to think Steam believes it knows what's best for me and is trying to be more than just a store. If they don't guarantee performance they shouldn't meddle.

Not being able to roll back the update was entirely my own fault. I didn't set up a close enough rollback point.

However - one thing about the new Defender's Quest patch is that it shouldn't require Adobe AIR anymore, at least not as a full installation. Now, all the AIR dependencies are packaged internally as statically linked libraries, so you should be free to uninstall AIR and use only whatever version the other game supports.

prevent developers from putting out games with contradictory system requirements.

That's near impossible. There are some games on Steam that don't work on newer versions of Windows (at least without some serious tweaking and third-party patches), and some games that require Vista or newer. Those are definitely conflicting system requirements, and the only way to prevent it would be to just remove the games entirely.

it wouldn't require me to keep its own application running in order to launch the goods I bought from the store.

It acts as a kind of DRM in this way. Without that you'd have far fewer AAA titles.

Any problems with a game that has been eitherported or originally made for mac operating systems come from two areas. The mac in use does not meet the requirements for the game in question, or the game dev screwed up an update for it. The second is quite rare and often fixed quickly. I personally have both but my mac is far superior. If your computer only meets minimum requirements for a game you are screwed, but if it excedes the requirements it should run equally as well as a PC.

Steam on the Mac does suck. It is really slow and has memory leak problems. Furthermore, Dungeon Defenders plays great on Windows. On the Mac, it is shit. In fact, if a Thunderbolt display is plugged in, the sound doesn't work on the Mac. They just don't have their acts together.

Sorry I was trying to get back to the original question "Does Steam just completely blow on the Mac?" and wanted to point out that those issues were outside of Steam's control and were the fault of the developers. Though if you wanted to evaluate gaming on a Mac in general they would be relevant points.

Even though Steam does have problems with crashing and sometimes freezing, the quality of the games themselves is quite variable. Dungeons of Dredmor is a bit unstable, but you can mostly have a good time. Solar 2 is really stable. As are DEFCON and the Half-Life games.

I'd say even though Steam does suck on the Mac. It's worth dealing with for the games you eventually do play. Hopefully those don't suck on their own.

I've never had any problems with Steam itself crashing. Sometimes an update will break Team Fortress 2 for a while, but it always gets sorted out. I've also probably never noticed any memory leaks because I have 16 gb of ram, but again it's crashed maybe twice in the three plus years I've used it.

All of the games I own and play (L4D2, Splinter Cell, TF2, GTA: San Andreas, Portal 1 & 2, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, & Nuclear Dawn) work like a champ.

I have a mid-2011 MacBook Pro. 16GB RAM.

The only hang-up I've ever had with Steam was when I first bought AC:B during the Winter sale. It took a few tries to get it to launch from the UbiSoft Game Launcher (gay), but all I had to do was spam the launch button and it started up. Now it starts everytime without a problem. So I guess that's not a Steam issue, more a UbiSoft issue.

I would just like to point out the reason you are getting downvoted good sir or madam. It is not for your statement, which in itself was well reasoned and eloquently written. Not even for the fact that your post didn't really get the heart of OP's issue. In fact, you were polite and shared a personal story of a good expererience with Steam on Mac. No, the reason you are getting downvoted is due to just one word in your post, and I think you know which word I mean. The internet has always been about the free exchange of ideas, and freedom of thought in general, however the more childish, and hateful side has always come out in gaming. And I don't mean to be preachy, but I think we need to move on from that word, particularly in this most holy of holies to Mac gaming: Reddit. So next time something is a pain in the ass, just say it was a pain in the ass. When someone is being an asshole online, just tell them they're an asshole. Just keep a huge portion of the population out of your vernacular and watch the upvotes pour in. Actually, thinking back on this post, I have no idea how to make upvotes pour in, but it's still the polite thing to do.

Words meaning evolve with usage. Nothing wrong with that. I don't think anyone here was being (really) offended by that usage of gay in that context, homosexuals or not. I don't think that battle needs to be done; people are using the word for a different meaning now. Get on with your life.

Although you are correct that using "gay" as a pejorative is common usage among some select groups, and you might personally not mean it as an attack specifically on any other group that might identify with the term, that does not mean that your use of the word as a pejorative is not hurtful to those that self-identify with that term.

Since you fully understand that some communities do find the pejorative use as hurtful, insistence upon using it as such is inherently a hurtful act, regardless of whether you feel that is right or wrong.